You're Going Down
by Lizzleby
Summary: Self-preservation will drive us to such extremes... ---- StarscreamxMegatron; 1st person, Starscream's POV. Character death.


Drabble/Oneshot THING inspired by "You're Going Down" by Sick Puppies. (I'm a cheat, I know. Keep stealing song titles--BAD ME.)

Unedited. I pictured it movie-verse and pretty much described it as such, but you can still technically picture it in whatever 'verse you want.

Time measurements: Stellar cycle = 1 year; solar cycle = 1 day; astrosecond = about 1 second; deca-cycle = 3 weeks.

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It had been a long time coming. Millions of stellar cycles, all leading up to this one meeting. This time, it would be different.

One of us was going down. And it sure as Pit wasn't going to be me.

It had been a tough time, serving him. Constant abuse, purposely failing him just to see that fire in his optics. Just to feel the anger and hatred radiating off of him. It was me, all me. _I _inspired such a reaction in him. _I_ was the only one who could get him _that mad._ Not even Prime could get under his dermal plating like I could.

Like a virus, I had planted my basic coding, laid down the groundwork for this moment. All those challenges, all those failures, they had served a greater purpose. I had _made_ myself lose those fights, allowed myself to be beaten. I had been weak. I would never have been able to rule an army in the beginning.

But, patiently, I had waited. Allowed him to think I was weak. Allowed him to become used to my constant assassination attempts. He'd learned to recharge with one optic online, never let his guard down.

After a few thousand stellar cycles of trying to offline him, I had made a proposal. Every time I tried to offline him and failed--Pit, failed him in any way--he could use me. Interface with me, use me for his release. I would submit to him ultimately as atonement for defying him.

He had been suspicious. I hadn't blamed him. I poked and prodded, coaxed him. Threatened to retract my offer. In he end, I'd convinced him, and we spent hundreds of thousands of stellar cycles in that routine. Our was a violent dance, a clashing of wills and pride and interfacing cables.

And now it was coming to an end. The final steps were being taken, and I was the one leading.

Desperation was what had driven me to offer my body up for his pleasure. He could still get his satisfaction of dominating me, but in a way that no longer threatened my life.

But this night would free me. No longer would I answer to him, submit to him.

I had won the moment he'd become comfortable with me, developed a _routine_. I tried to offline him, tried to turn his mechs against him. Failed. He sought his revenge by 'facing me into the next lunar cycle. He almost never caused me pain, preferring to just use me and get it over with.

He got _soft_.

When he would beat me, sometimes I'd be brought to the brink of offline, and wake up several solar cycles later, bent and broken. I'd almost given up on my goal, afraid of that nothingness, afraid of my life cycle ending in such a violent way.

I had unseated him. He'd fallen into the rhythm of our dance, gotten used to it. So when I changed things up by being unusually well-behaved, he had been a little lost. He never showed it to anyone but me, and even that was behind closed doors.

"What are you planning, my Starscream?" he had purred, servos roaming over my body.

"Nothing," I'd said, stepping away from him. His faceplates had darkened, jagged dentals baring as a growl rumbled from his chassis. He'd advanced towards me, but I had backed away, sidestepped him, making sure I was never too close to the wall. I would not allow him to pin me and use me; our agreement was to use that as a punishment, and I had done nothing wrong. Gracefully and slyly, with all the agility of a Seeker, I had avoided his grasping claws.

I had turned our figurative dance into a literal one. And slowly, I navigated myself to the door.

Silently, ignoring his grating voice calling my designation, I had left the room.

The fact that he'd let me go was all the proof I needed of my victory.

It was time. I'd reached his quarters, and I could _feel_ that he was awake. I smirked. He was truly unsettled by my change in behavior.

I couldn't help but think that he had gone soft because of the Autobot energon in his fuel lines. However minute, however diluted, it was there. He'd opened up, then gotten _hurt_.

He was not a true Decepticon. He did not deserve to rule us.

Without knocking, I typed in the code to open the door. It did so with a soft hiss, and I saw his bright crimson optics lock on me from the depths of the otherwise inky blackness of his room. They brightened at the sight of me, then dimmed. I heard a faint growl.

Ignoring it, I stepped inside. The door slid shut behind me with another soft hiss.

"Starscream," he said, voice mimicking that pressured release of air. I ignored the warning in his tone and strode up to him.

Then I was looking down at his optics (he was seated on his berth, and oh how I _loved_ being above him). We just gazed at each other for what seemed to be an endless amount of time. Our dance was paused, each of us suspended mid-step. We teetered on a brink--one I knew both of us could feel, but I doubted he understood the depths of that abyss he was so close to.

"Take me," I said.

His optics shuttered in surprise. I fought back another smirk; I had really caught him off guard. A sign of how pathetic he'd become.

Leaning down, I ran my glossa over his lip components, carefully avoiding the jagged rows of dentals. He tensed; I heard his joints creak.

And then, suddenly, I was beneath him again. My pain receptors took a full two astroseconds to process what had happened, and as his mouth descended to my neck cables, a dull ache spread through my wings and back strut. I pushed it away, keeping my mind clear. I could not afford even the slightest misstep. Not this close.

I played into the roll, giving a soft groan and arching up into him. I turned my helm to the side, my own claws touching him roughly, desperately. I conveyed the message that I was already aroused, in need of more than teasing. My cooling fans quickly complied, kicking in and fueling my lies. The tips of my claws dipped into any sort of crevice they could find, brushing sensitive, rarely-exposed wires. I needed to get him to my projected level; I wanted this over with as soon as possible.

I heard a deep, uneven rumbling, and it took me a moment to realize that Megatron was laughing. He pulled back from me, baring his deadly dentals. His optics were bright.

"What?" I snapped.

He lowered himself so that his lip components brushed the outer casing of my audio receptors as he said, "If you desired me so badly, my Starscream..." He paused, and I forced myself not to grind my own dentals together. "Then why did you behave so well for so long?"

It was a rhetorical question, I knew, and I did not answer it. His dentals nipped sharply at the sensitive metal his lips had so teasingly brushed, and my intakes stuttered. He chuckled again, sending a shiver down my back strut.

Suddenly, I was even more eager to get it over with. Desperate, even. Maybe it was reckless, to rush things, stray from the careful plan I'd formed, but I needed to end this _now_. Before we could link up. Before I could lose control and slip into the pleasure he brought me.

Able to think at least a few steps ahead, I peeled off some of his armor around his chassis. A few key plates here, a more random ones there. I touched the exposed dermal plating gently, tenderly. Like a lover would do.

He shuttered his optics (I know because the dim read light next to my helm went out almost completely) and shivered.

"You want to know why I behaved so well?" I asked softly, tensing beneath him. I knew my tone was going to give me away, but it wouldn't matter.

Megatron drew back, a sudden suspicion in his now-open optics. A suspicion that appeared far too late, because my null ray was already charged and aimed at his chassis. Directly over the tainted Spark no longer protected by Cybertron's best armor.

His optics grew brighter, but he did not move. He thought this was a ploy, or that I would fail now as I had every other time.

I sneered at him, "You are a fool, Megatron."

I took my shot.

It landed home.

The burst of energy connected with his Spark, causing a minor explosion that stripped some of my claws down to the barest wires and structural rods. I felt searing pain, but as if through another mech.

As I watched, Megatron's optics rapidly dimmed. He mustered the last of his strength (I had never heard of a 'bot surviving a hit straight to the Spark for any length of time, but leave it to him to do it) and reached out to me.

His claws brushed my faceplates. I would have thought it was a tender motion, if not for the way the light behind his crimson glass went out and he fell onto me. He had clearly been intending more, but had run out of time.

Megatron was offline. Our dance was done. I could scarcely believe it. I wouldn't have, if I hadn't have been the one to do it, end it all.

Oddly, I was not smiling. I was not showing any kind of joy or triumph at having finally succeeded in such a difficult task. I did not mourn for his death, but it felt empty all the same.

In the following deca-cycles, as the other Decepticons came to see me as their leader, I was asked why I didn't seem as elated as they thought I should. I refused answered those questions, instead quelling them with a hard glare.

Because the truth was not something I could bear for _my_ army to know.

The fact that _something _inside of me had begun to grow attached to Megatron, become fond of him and of our dance, was to forever be my secret.


End file.
